Year: 2009

I am in the final stages of writ­ing a book on the reli­gious beliefs of post-World War II Pres­i­dents. In the chap­ter on Dwight Eisen­how­er, I wrote that although Eisen­how­er asked for the “bless­ing of Almighty God” on D-Day, few assess­ments of him would dwell on his reli­gious char­ac­ter: “In fact, Eisenhower’s faith might be more accu­rate­ly described by Win­ston Churchill’s remark that he had made “so many deposits in the Bank of Obser­vance” as a youth that he had been con­fi­dent­ly with­draw­ing from it ever since. Can you con­firm the quo­ta­tion? —D.H., Vir­ginia

“A few cur­mud­geons have flam­boy­ant­ly abstained from join­ing in this birth­day greet­ing; but they are so few that their action mere­ly empha­sis­es the fact that per­son­al respect and friend­ship habit­u­al­ly sur­vive and tran­scend polit­i­cal con­flict in the Moth­er of Par­lia­ments. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate that these all-par­ty trib­utes on his birth­day should be paid to one, the out­stand­ing fact of whose char­ac­ter and career is that he has nev­er been hap­pi­er than when lead­ing men of all par­ties and men of no par­ty in some great nation­al cause. He has nev­er ceased to com­bine zeal for reform with rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion.…

Great web­site! I am a psy­chol­o­gist writ­ing a book man­u­script on the bio­log­i­cal basis of self-con­fi­dence. I am an admir­er of Churchill, I would like to use a quote from The Gath­er­ing Storm movie to demon­strate Churchill’s tremen­dous con­fi­dence. Can you help me find the film com­ment, to Ralph Wigram? In con­ver­sa­tion with a school­mate [Mur­land Evans] he says he had a strange feel­ing. One day, he said, Britain would be in great dan­ger, and it will fall to him to save Lon­don. —B.J.S.

Private Doubts

Thanks for the kind words. Pri­vate­ly the Churchill of ear­ly World War II was not so con­fi­dent as his speech­es pro­claimed.…